Outdoor Photography How To

There’s an old saying among landscape photographers that if you always stash your gear when the weather turns bad, you will likely miss out on some spectacular photo opportunities. In the video below, you’ll follow British landscape photographer Nigel Danson as he treks through England’s Peak District amidst rain, gloomy light, and high winds, to capture some awesome images. 

When I opened Michael Shainblum’s Instagram page, I sat there mesmerized by the landscape images and videos. After some minutes, I had to remind myself that I had work to do.

“Focus stacking” is a powerful image-editing technique for increasing the apparent depth of field in an image, and it’s relatively easy to accomplish. The idea is to shoot several photos of a scene at slightly different distances, and then merge the sharpest portions of each shot using Photoshop, Lightroom or another editing program.

Shooting on the streets of your local town or city is an accessible and engaging form of photography, offering unlimited opportunities for great imagery. Interesting buildings and monuments, colorful street signs, and attractive passersby are among the many possibilities.

Sometimes it’s great to get outdoors and shoot environmental portraits with a real backdrop like Colorado’s Flatiron Mountains outside of Boulder. The problem is that unless you have some sweet golden-hour light, the harsh midday sun can make such a task very difficult.

Astrophotography is a unique specialty that often results in truly spectacular images. And if you want to capture dazzling star trail photos, often considered the holy grail of nighttime photography, check out the video below.

David Bergman is a top sports photographer, and in this two-minute tutorial he demonstrates how to convey motion in action photos by “panning” with your camera. The technique involves moving the camera at the same speed as your subject, with the goal of keeping the subject sharp while creating a blurred effect in the background.